When It’s Time to Join Yet Another Social Network

Gib — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:57:08 +0000

Over at Mashable, Dave Taylor asks the great question When is it Time to Jump Into Yet Another Social Network?.

Here’s what I wrote over there:

A simple answer to this one.

You join when you’re ready.

When am I personally ready? When I start hearing people I know and admire referring to the new social network the same way they refer to email, text and phone calls.

“FaceBook me tomorrow?”

Or “I MySpaced her all about it.”

Or “Are you on Twitter? Follow me there.”

On the other hand, if it’s really cool, I might join before I’m really ready by that standard.

Of course, with Twitter, I joined not because everyone was on it, but because Robert Scoble was blogging about it and I didn’t quite understand its value by itself. I saw it mainly as a way to write blog posts 140 characters at a time from my BlackBerry. That it’s turned into much more than that is sort of a happy accident.

Pandora I don’t see so much as a social network. It’s a music box for me when I don’t want to drag my CDs around. Same thing with imeem. I never liked MySpace much, even though I have friends who swear by it. I swear at it.

[Image by M. Keef via Flickr under a creative commons license.]

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Social Media — What is it Good For? (for me)

Gib — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:15:48 +0000

A blogger I read wrote a great article about his looking back at 3 months without blogging. I’ve been out of writing real posts for at least that long, what with directing/producing my play with music (yeah, wrote the songs, too).

Social Media — What is it Good For?

Below the jump is my look at all of the social media I’ve been using.

Twitter

I didn’t write Tweets nearly as much. However, I still enjoyed following Twitter friends even when I wasn’t sending much myself. I’ve decided Twitter is great for links and interesting micro-commentary when I’m in line somewhere or commuting.

I found the TwitterKarma website and followed a bunch of people who somehow started following me.

For In Real Life connections, a friendly aquantance of mine ran into me at a local watering hole and said, “Oh, add me on FaceBook, please! I’ve been following you on Twitter for months. You sure do update a lot!”

Then, the next day, I found a friend I’d lost contact with years ago on FaceBook. She confessed she’d been following my Twitter stream for months.

News

I tend to gravitate towards the New York Times often, but Google News most regularly. Google News allows filters to be setup, so with the marriage equality goings on in California, I was very aware of small hurdles before most people in my social circles.

Personalizing news allows you to retrofit the mainstream media into your own personal narrow-cast stream.

People always find me on LinkedIn. I login every few months. I’m sort of in an internal debate whether it’s useful. So far I haven’t received or given any concrete help through this, even for introductions.

Facebook

Hands-down the most fun and most checked social media outlet for me for the past several months. People find me on Facebook often, and when I have a fond recollection of someone who resists Google searching, I can often find them on Facebook.

I used a browser-based script at work that turned down every single application, but when I started using Flock as my primary browser, I never installed it.

Google Reader

I’m oversubscribed. I just removed a bunch of political blogs. Really, the only one remaining is Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic for his clear-headed analysis of the rhetoric of the campaigns.

Friend Feed

I can’t figure this one out. It’s such a weird and ugly experience. I plug things in but never check to see what’s going on.

Stumble

I rarely use it. On Friend Feed I remembered I had a Stumble account but couldn’t remember anything about it.

Pandora

I love it! A friend sent me the Pandora application on FaceBook and I’ve been using it more often during the day.

Real Life

My show’s over. My father’s moved out into his own apartment at long last. I’m sleeping very well. Next thing to change will be the gym.